Supporting R Learners on the Job During Interesting Times

A Panel of R Educators

June 10, 2025

Welcome

These slides available at: https://pm0kjp.github.io/rmedicine_2025_education_panel/slides/r_education_panel.html

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Panel Today

Panel convener: Joy Payton

Additional Panelists:

  • Ray Balise
  • Silvia Canelón
  • Meghan Harris
  • Ted Laderas

We’ll have a few questions to get started but we want to engage with you, so please use chat liberally!

Panelist Ray Balise

Raymond R. Balise, PhD

Associate Professor of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics

  • Teaches classes for the Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at the University of Miami
    • Survey of Statistical Computing
    • Software Tools for Reproducible Research
    • Data Science and Machine Learning for Health Research
  • Mostly graduate students studying public health, biostatistics, nursing, psychology
  • Specializes in asynchronous instruction using R packages like learnr and gradethis as well as synchronous online instruction using tools like Zoom and Posit.Cloud.

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Panelist Silvia Canelón

Panelist Meghan Harris

Panelist Ted Laderas

Ted Laderas, PhD

  • I’ve worked with many different kinds of adult learners: clinicians, bioinformaticians, biologists, finance, social scientists, engineers, and educators
  • Currently Director of Training and Community for Office of the Chief Data Officer, Fred Hutch Cancer Center
  • Recovering academic; focus is on workforce training and psychological safety

A headshot of Ted Laderas, who has long hair a long beard, but not in this photo.

Panelist Joy Payton

Joy Payton, MS

(For 2 more weeks) Manager of Data Education, Arcus Initiative, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

  • Teach workshops / short courses in data science (R, Python, SQL, ML, AI, NLP, etc.) for biomedical researchers and MD Fellows at CHOP and beyond
  • Assists in Global Health Informatics efforts (Botswana, Dominican Republic, Panamá)
  • Occasional adjunct professor / teach for O’Reilly

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Question 1

Vibe coding and using LLMs to write code is enjoying a lot of press these days. Is it still necessary to teach people to write R code, and if so, how much?

Question 2

The title of this panel mentions “interesting times”. What is making your work as an educator particularly interesting these days, whether that’s good or bad?

Question 3

What are some of the tools and methods you find most effective to get people to use their skills and retain their use?

Your Questions!

Some of our Favorite Resources

  • https://posit.cloud
  • https://rstudio.github.io/learnr/
  • https://rstudio.github.io/gradethis/
  • https://juliasilge.com/blog/.